Oh foolish me!!

Of course you had to be a male and 21 -- I'm afraid I was thinking in 18th
century mode where that would have been a given.

Sorry about that.

Peter

On Thu, 12 Apr 2001 10:40:08 -0400, Melinda Skinner
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Surely you had to be male and of a certain age, as well.  No?
>
>Melinda Skinner  *
><[log in to unmask]>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Peter V. Bergstrom [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 10:43 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Jury Qualification.
>
>
>In order to be chosen for either a Grand Jury or a Petit Jury, you had to
>be a freeholder -- i.e. a property holder.  Jury qualifications are re-
>enacted at various points in time and can be found in Hening's Statuates.
>
>
>I'm sorry I'm not answereing this from my home office, so I can't come up
>with the full citations at this time.
>
>Propery holders never made up more that 10-20% of the free population of
>most counties, hence the jury selection pool was always small.  Moreover,
>the selection had to be made from among those qualified who happened to be
>available at Court at the time of the trial, hence making the pool even
>smaller for any given trial.  Impartiality was not a qualification for jury
>duty -- at least not in the sense we'd think of it today.  Knowing
>something about the facts of the case at issue was actually considered to
>be a desireable qualification!
>
>I hope this helps,
>
>Peter V. Bergstrom
>
>
>
>On Thu, 12 Apr 2001 09:53:31 EDT, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>>     In researching court records for the 1750-1775 timeframe in the
>Northern
>>Neck of VA., I find repeated mention of the Sheriff being ordered to
summon
>>'qualified' persons for jury duty.
>>
>>     In reviewing jury lists, the persons served over and over again, but
>>they represent only a small fraction of the total male population of any
>>given county at any given time.
>>
>>     What was the qualification for serving on a jury in this period?
>>
>>     Bill Balderson
>>
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